Some sets you walk onto and think: fine, we'll make it work. And some sets you walk onto and audibly gasp, and the stylist laughs at you, and you don't even care. The velvet room was the second kind. Floor-to-ceiling blue curtains, a sofa the colour of deep water, a red shag rug that ate one of my earrings (still in there, probably), and in the corner - the lamp.
The lamp deserves its own paragraph. A chrome arc lamp from somewhere around 1974, with a shade like a satsuma the size of a beach ball. It swung. It glowed. It was, and I say this with total sincerity, the best scene partner I have ever had. I held it, leaned on it, danced behind it until only my arms were visible. The photographer kept saying "one more with the lamp" and I kept saying yes, because we both knew the lamp was carrying the campaign.
What I love about seventies interiors is that they're not embarrassed of themselves. Nothing in that room was neutral. Nothing was greige. Every object had committed to a colour and stood by it, and honestly I think that's why the pictures worked - it's hard to be self-conscious in a room that has none.
We wrapped at nine. I asked, casually, whether the lamp was for sale. It was not. I have thought about it roughly once a week ever since, the way other people think about a person who got away. If whoever owns that showroom ever reads this: my offer stands.